Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison either for the rest of their natural lives or until pardoned, paroled or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for which, in some countries, a person could receive this sentence include murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, apostasy, terrorism, severe child abuse, rape, child rape, espionage, treason, high treason, drug dealing, drug trafficking, drug possession, human trafficking, severe cases of fraud, severe cases of financial crimes, aggravated criminal damage in English law, and aggravated cases of arson, kidnapping, burglary, or robbery which result in death or grievous bodily harm, piracy, aircraft hijacking, and in certain cases genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, certain war crimes or any three felonies in case of three-strikes law. Life imprisonment can also be imposed, in certain countries, for traffic offenses causing death. Life imprisonment is not used in all countries; Portugal was the first country to abolish life imprisonment, in 1884.
Julian Knight is an Australian mass murderer. On 9 August 1987, he shot dead seven people and injured 19 during a shooting spree in Clifton Hill, Victoria, Australia, in what became known in Australian history as the Hoddle Street massacre.
Peter Norris Dupas is an Australian convicted serial killer, currently serving three life sentences without parole for murder and primarily for being a serious habitual offender. He has a very significant criminal history involving serious sexual and violent offences, with his violent criminal history spanning more than three decades, and with every release from prison has been known to commit further crimes against women with increasing levels of violence. His criminal signature is to remove the breasts of his female victims.
Joseph "Jihad Jack" Terrence Thomas is an Australian citizen who undertook pistol, light firearm and demolition training with Al-Qaeda. Osama Bin Laden visited his training camp three times while he was in attendance and he shook hands with him. He was convicted for received funds from Al-Qaeda which was later overturned on appeal. Thomas, commonly referred to in Australian media as "Jihad Jack", was acquitted of providing resources that would assist in a terrorist act before becoming the first Australian to be placed under a control order under the Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005.
Antonios Sajih Mokbel is an Australian criminal who has been convicted for a number of offences, most prominently commercial drug trafficking. He has spent most of his life in Melbourne, Australia. Operation Purana alleged that he is the mastermind behind the Melbourne amphetamines trade. He has been linked to Carl Williams as well as the killing of several victims of the Melbourne gangland war. He disappeared from Melbourne while on trial in March 2006, and he was arrested by Greek police in Athens, Greece, on 5 June 2007. Prior to his arrest, there was a $1 million bounty for information leading to his capture. According to Victoria Police, this reward still stands for the person who tipped off the police on his whereabouts.
R v Thomas was an Australian court case decided in the Victorian Court of Appeal on 18 August 2006. It concerned the conviction in February 2006 of Joseph Thomas on terrorism-related charges, specifically receiving funds from Al Qaeda. The appeal revolved around the admissibility of a confession Thomas made during an interrogation in Pakistan in 2003. The court found that the evidence, which was crucial to Thomas' convictions, was inadmissible because it had not been given voluntarily. The court accordingly quashed his convictions, but after further hearings ordered on 20 December 2006 that he be retried rather than acquitted.
A Langer vote was a style of voting in the Australian electoral system designed to avoid the requirement to express preferences for all candidates without the vote being rejected as informal. The title is a tribute to Albert Langer, an Australian political activist, who advocated for the use of this style as a de facto method of optional preferential voting for making a valid vote for the voter's preferred candidates while the deliberate "error" avoided the vote being counted for one of the major political parties.
The Crimes Act 1900, is a New South Wales statute that sets out the majority of criminal offences for the state of New South Wales in Australia. Along with the Crimes Act 1914, and the Federal Criminal Code Act 1995, these three pieces of legislation form the majority of criminal law for New South Wales.
Thomas v Mowbray, was a decision handed of the High Court of Australia on 2 August 2007 concerning the constitutional validity of "interim control orders" under the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The case was brought by Joseph Terrence Thomas, where he sought to challenge the interim control order that had been placed on him by a Federal Magistrate. The High Court ruled, by a 5:2 majority, that interim control orders were constitutional.
Gregory John 'Bluey' Brazel is a convicted Australian serial killer, arsonist, and armed robber currently serving three consecutive life sentences for the murders of sex workers Sharon Taylor and Roslyn Hayward in 1990, and the murder of Mordialloc hardware store owner Mildred Hanmer during an armed robbery in 1982 to which he confessed some eighteen years later.
Martin Leach, is a convicted rapist and double murderer in Australia, and has been described as one of, if not the Northern Territory's worst, killer.
Bruce Allan Burrell was an Australian convicted kidnapper and double murderer, who in 2006 was sentenced to serve life imprisonment plus 44 years for the 1995 murder of 74-year-old Dorothy Davis and the 1997 murder of 39-year-old Kerry Whelan, neither of whom was ever found, with Burrell not revealing the location of his victims' bodies. Burrell died at the Prince of Wales Hospital at Randwick, whilst still in prison custody on 4 August 2016, aged 63, from lung and liver cancer.
Naseam El-Zeyat is an Australian double murderer from Sydney, currently serving two sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the murder of two people in October 2003.
Ramzi Aouad is an Australian double murderer from Sydney, New South Wales, currently serving two sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the murder of two people in October 2003.
Human trafficking in Australia is illegal under Divisions 270 and 271 of the Criminal Code (Cth). In September 2005, Australia ratified the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, which supplemented the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Amendments to the Criminal Code were made in 2005 to implement the Protocol.
Life imprisonment in Australia is the most severe punishment handed down in the country. It is handed down for serious criminal offences by the State and Territory Supreme Courts in Australia. The vast majority of convictions punished by life imprisonment are for murder. It is also imposed, albeit rarely, for sexual assault, manufacturing and trafficking commercial quantities of illicit drugs, and offences against the justice system and government security, among others.
Keith William Allan was an Australian solicitor, murdered in a contract killing. He was educated at Northcote High School and the University of Melbourne, where he completed the degree Bachelor of Laws. He practised as a solicitor at Avondale Heights, a western suburb of Melbourne located in the City of Moonee Valley. He was a cousin of Jacinta Allan, a Minister in the Victorian state governments of Steve Bracks, John Brumby and Daniel Andrews. He was also a cousin of former test cricketer Graham Yallop and former Australian rules footballers Ken Turner (Collingwood), Jamie Turner (Collingwood) and Max Oppy (Richmond).
Tom Danos is a high-profile barrister in Victoria, Australia. He mainly practices in the area of criminal law, and is Treasurer of the Victorian Criminal Bar Association. Danos is a trustee member of the Maccabi World Union Board. He represented Australian athletes who were injured in the Maccabiah bridge collapse in Israel in 1997. He also represented John Patrick Ford, a convicted man who gave evidence in the trial of alleged drug courier Schapelle Corby in Indonesia.
Elizabeth Fullerton is an Australian lawyer, specialising in criminal law, who has been a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales since February 2007.
